01 Hybrid Work Isn’t New.
But It’s Now Normal. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of workplace flexibility, demonstrating that many people can be productive outside the office. Work now includes a multitude of digital-first tasks, such as writing emails and creating spreadsheets—which can be accomplished virtually and often were prior to COVID-19. Hybrid work is consequently something many already engaged in to varying degrees before the pandemic.
02 Hybrid Work Will Require a Hybrid Workplace.
With employers viewing the office as a place for collaboration and meaningful employee connection, the role of the workplace is shifting towards a more intentional work setting defined by its ability to bring people and teams together. This shift has marked implications for office design, planning and workplace equity—or balancing the in-office and virtual employee experiences.
03 Hybrid Work Will Lead to More Consumer-Oriented Offices.
In this ‘next normal,’ organizations will need to create differentiated offices where employees want to work. This will lead to more consumer-oriented approaches to the workplace where employers design their offices around the needs of their workforce. After a large-scale experiment in virtual work due to the coronavirus pandemic, the traditional boundaries of where work is performed are being redefined.
Individual employees overwhelmingly want the flexibility to work virtually in the future, according to research from CBRE. But most office workers also want to work in an office for at least part of the week.
Meanwhile, companies want their employees to remain productive and connected to one another. For some, this will mean a full return to the office. Others will give their employees latitude to find the right balance of work in—and outside of—the office.
The need to balance employee flexibility and organizational productivity has led companies to explore hybrid work models, which enable employees to work from the office or virtually. Their approach involves rethinking how, when and where we work.
Hybrid Work: There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Approach
Hybrid work gained prominence in the wake of COVID-19 as many companies adopted virtual work policies—almost overnight, in some cases—to ensure the health and safety of employees during the pandemic.
Today, many office workers like their newfound flexibility. In CBRE’s most recent Workforce Sentiment Survey of 10,000 employees across 18 countries, 85% of respondents said they would prefer to work virtually at least two to three days a week going forward.
For many companies, having some employees who work outside the office is not new. But the broad-scale recognition that organizations need to sustain virtual connectivity at scale and actively support a hybrid workforce marks a new approach for many such companies.
Over the past decade, technology advancements and a growing desire among employees for flexibility started paving the path to make the accelerated structural change we see today.
This evolution is already taking place. In CBRE’s 2021 Occupier Sentiment Survey, 87% of large companies with 10,000 or more employees say they will be adopting hybrid work. But these companies aren’t taking a homogenous approach to hybrid work.
By far the most popular approach to hybrid work involves setting guidance for who can—or should—be in the office and when. CBRE calls this approach “hybrid work with guardrails,” and it’s being pursued by 78% of large companies with 10,000 or more employees.
Yet each company is setting guidelines that are often unique to their organization. Some companies are requiring employees to spend a certain amount of their work week in the office. Others are taking a team-by-team approach, asking certain groups to spend more time in the office than others.
Over the coming months, many companies will need to define what hybrid work means to them. Those definitions will likely vary between organizations and will continue to be refined over time as companies collect data on what is effective—and what is not.
The Challenges Behind Adopting Hybrid Work
Despite the interest in hybrid work among companies and employees, businesses are confronting real-world challenges in adopting it.
Some of the most common challenges include:
01 Hybrid work is difficult to implement.
Decision makers are facing a number of questions integral to implementing a hybrid work model.
Key among them: How can you ensure the right people are in the office? What will office occupancy rates be? And what will employees need most in the office?
Most organizations are providing guidance for employees in an effort to bring a degree of predictability to the hybrid workplace. These policies are likely to be revisited as companies collect real-world observations over time.
02 Hybrid work makes it challenging to ensure workplace equity for all employees.
A central challenge with hybrid work is workplace equity—ensuring employees who work virtually are visible, engaged and offered the same opportunities as their counterparts in the physical office.
As employees head back to the office under a hybrid model, concerns are rising about inequities in the workplace experience, and companies are exploring ways to sustain parity between those who work in the office and those who work virtually.
03 A hybrid workplace can lead to a disconnected workforce.
Culture has long been viewed as a way to attract and retain talent. However, with a dispersed workforce, building a culture that attracts employees to the company becomes more challenging. To create culture, collaboration and connections must be formed and nurtured between employees, teams and leadership who may be operating under different work models.
Companies that adopt hybrid work will need to determine ways to meaningfully connect their workforce in the right place at the right time and maintain their workplace culture between the virtual and in-office divide.
A Framework for Understanding Hybrid Work
CBRE believes the successful adoption of hybrid work within a company requires defining WHERE work can be accomplished, WHAT work requires in-person collaboration to accomplish and WHO benefits most from spending time in the office.
An overarching question is HOW workspaces advance company objectives, employee collaboration and culture.
In short, the successful adoption of hybrid work first involves understanding the unique needs of the company and workforce before prescribing workplace and employee policy strategies.
By using this framework, decision makers can take a methodological approach to defining hybrid work in the context of the organization.
Who, What, Where, Howhttps://view.ceros.com/cbre/desktop-triangle
The Spectrum of Hybrid Work Models
Once an organization has answered the questions in the Hybrid Work Framework, they must select a model. Models range with great diversity across the spectrum below. Just as there will be no one-size-fits-all approach, many organizations are also choosing to apply different models on a department-by-department or team-by-team basis.
Actionable Strategies to Successfully Transition to Hybrid Work
CBRE has determined essential short- and long-term recommendations and strategies organizations should consider to successfully adopt hybrid work.
Every company will, of course, have its own unique needs. But the following recommendations offer actionable strategies companies can take to simplify the transition to hybrid work.
Short-Term Recommendations
01 Involve your employees and teams in the conversation.
Many companies are already leveraging a mix of employee surveys, polls and dialogue to determine what teams and people want after COVID-19, what they need the office for and how often they expect to be there.
But no workforce is homogenous. Each employee and team will have different needs. Consider asking employees, managers and executive leaders about WHERE work can be done effectively, WHAT work requires in-person collaboration to complete and WHO will need to be in the office and when.
Involving employees in the conversation shouldn’t be a one-time event. Schedule regular check-ins with the workforce to course correct as needed.
02 Communicate new workplace policies.
Regardless of which virtual work policy the company chooses, make sure the workforce knows what to expect and what’s expected of them in turn.
Key items to consider include developing policies on meeting etiquette for virtual and in-person participants, recommending office space use cases and detailing expected work hours. It’s important to think through what policies should apply to your entire workforce and which should apply to individual teams.
Allow for continuous feedback from employees to determine what policies are working—and which are not. The goal is to afford employees flexibility while maintaining predictability in where and when they work.
By aspiring to a level of predictability, companies can enable your employees to understand what the workplace expectations are—and have a better baseline for space planning considerations.
03 Invest in the right technology.
From facilitating virtual collaboration to helping employees reserve time in the office, the right technology can help companies and teams transition effectively to hybrid work.
The most important technologies to invest in include video conferencing, chat applications and audio-visual setups—such as well-placed microphones, speakers and high-definition displays—in meeting rooms so attendees can clearly communicate with one another.
In CBRE’s 2021 Occupier Sentiment Survey, 70% of large companies with 10,000 or more employees said they are investing in enhanced video conferencing hardware and software.
Other important technologies to invest in include employee experience applications and software that enable employees to book meetings and reserve time in the office to meet with their teams. In the same survey, 33% of large companies said they were investing in employee experience applications.
Additionally, some companies may consider investing in workplace sensors, which can be used to track workplace occupancy rates—and collect data on which workspaces are most used by employees. This data can be used to inform investment decisions and workplace policies.
04 Make room for collaboration in the office.
In survey after survey, employees consistently say the most compelling reasons to go back to the office include collaborating in person, attending meetings and experiencing serendipitous encounters with colleagues.
All of this has implications for office design. Offices have traditionally been built around individual workstations. But a hybrid workplace needs to facilitate in-person collaboration and in-office flexibility.
Today, we are seeing clients’ prioritizing capital to build more collaborative work zones and enhance video conferencing to support a newly hybrid workforce.